Promenade Home
by EllieMurasaki
Summary: Some ghosts exist by mutual consent, such as when seven dancers rise for a dance designed for eight. Some ghosts are real.


Tap-tappity-tap goes the keyboard of Sam's laptop. "I have something," recites the mechanical voice of the text-to-speech program. "Three deaths in or near Chestertown, Maryland. Young adults. Car crashes. Second Saturday of the month, late evening, three months in a row."

"Could be mundane," Dean says.

Tap-tap-tap. "I have a feeling."

Dean knows Sam's feelings by now. "Chestertown it is," he says. He doesn't look at Sam. He never knows what he'll see.

xXxXx

When Sam tells him the connection between Krista Wilson, Bill Bradley, and Mary Anne Jefferson and suggests where to meet all three victims' families at once, Dean laughs for five minutes. "No."

Tappity. "I'll walk you through it. You'll be fine."

"I am not linking elbows and skipping in a circle with anybody."

Tap-tappity. "I should punch you. Only to defend Jess's honor, you understand. She was touchy about that stereotype. Which is incidentally completely wrong."

"So I'm going in blind?"

"Can you tell the difference between left and right?" Sam shoots back.

Tappitytappitytappity. "Can you follow simple instructions? Congratulations, you can square dance."

xXxXx

"I'm just here to watch," Dean tells the brunette girl with the money box, whose green-bell-pepper nametag says _Megan Harrington_. "My brother's the dancer, he insisted I come with him and see why he enjoys it, and then his boss called and he ditched me."

"That's okay," Megan says, determinedly cheerful. "I'll ask John to do a beginner tip for you." She scurries over to the older man setting up the microphone.

"I didn't say I wanted to dance," Dean protests.

"She's just excited about somebody new," says the pretty redhead next to the ticket roll and the bucket labeled i50/50, 1 for $1, 6 for $5/i. She's wearing two nametags, _Moira Harrington_ and _Olivia Harrington_. "We're having enough trouble getting our regulars to dances after—" She snaps her mouth shut.

"After?" Dean asks.

She hesitates, then says, "The club's been having bad luck lately. It's a good thing we were doing spectacularly well before—if any other club in the area had this severe a drop in attendance, they'd have no squares at all."

Dean nods. "Is it Moira or Olivia?"

"Livy. Moira was my sister." Livy looks away. "She loved to dance."

Past tense. "I'm sorry for your loss."

Livy takes a breath, then nods.

Music starts, something more upbeat and with less fiddle than Dean was expecting. "All right, square 'em up," says the man with the microphone. "This tip is for everybody, including the people who've never danced before. I hear we have one tonight."

Megan appears at Dean's side. "Dance with me?"

Dean lets her lead him into the square and steer him through circling left and right, dosidos and allemande lefts. It can't hurt anything, after all, and she's cute. Jailbait, but cute. During the break, he circles the room; by the time he realizes there are no nametags saying Bradley, Wilson, or Jefferson, the caller is announcing a "plus tip", which gets everybody onto the floor except Livy, the blonde girl with her nose in a book, and Sam, who gestures for Dean to sit. Then Livy gets up to dance in a square by herself, so Dean goes over to the blonde girl. He is completely ignored.

Dean looks for Sam, to ask again if there's any point to being here, and sees him dancing with Livy. Dean doesn't have any basis of comparison, of course, but he thinks Sam's good—phrases such as 'Ferris wheel' and 'scoot back' and 'load the boat' don't confuse Sam, at least. He wonders what else Sam learned at Stanford and never told him about. Laughter from one of the squares distracts him, and he watches that group sort themselves into facing lines while the others carry on without a misstep until an overly emphatic "Lines forward and back" from the caller gets the first square moving again. Dean looks back at Sam and Livy, which gives him an excellent view of Livy's eyes going wide when a brunette girl appears in Livy's not-square, moving as though she's been there all along. The girl flickers out, then in, and Livy turns and runs.

Dean catches up with her upstairs in the darkened sanctuary on the main level of the building. She's sitting in one of the pews, shaking. He sits next to her. "Who was she?" he asks.

"Which she?" Livy asks.

"Brown hair, red dress, you ran when you saw her."

Livy gasps, then lets out a long breath. "You won't believe me. Nobody does. Not even me."

"I'm guessing it wasn't Bill," Dean says. "Might be Mary Anne, but I'm thinking it's Krista, since she died first."

Livy turns to stare at him. "No. No, she didn't."

Footsteps behind him. "Olivia," says a woman.

"She's here, Mom," Livy says. "I'm not crazy and I'm not gonna see a shrink. I'm _not_. She's _here_."

"I wish she were here too, sweetie," Livy's mother answers, sounding as though she's trying not to cry. She slides into the pew on Livy's other side. "But she's dead, and you have to—to accept that."

"_I know she's dead!_" Livy yells. "But she's _here_. She's _been _here four months running, now. Maybe if you'd come back sooner, you'd see her too." A choked laugh, almost a sob. "Dancing with ghosts isn't supposed to be _literal_."

"Huh?" Dean says.

"That's the phrase for dancing with less than eight to a square, Dean," Sam says from the next pew. "It's just that usually the ghosts are imaginary."

"Oh," Dean says. Livy's mother looks at him strangely.

"Usually?" Livy repeats, staring at Sam. "You saw her too!"

"Olivia, who are you talking to?" Livy's mother asks.

Four months running, Dean thinks. Tonight, last month when Mary Anne died, two months ago and Bill, three months ago and Krista, so probably not Krista, and if it's someone both Livy and her mother are broken up about— "Livy, was that Moira?"

"Just now? No."

"The girl in the red dress dancing with you and Sam," Dean clarifies. "Was that Moira?"

"You're crazy," Livy's mother says immediately. "You're crazy and I don't want you anywhere near my daughter."

"Why, because they're encouraging my delusions?" Livy says bitterly. "God must be real and ghosts can't be, is that it? Why is it so hard to believe that Moira loved dancing with us so much that she's still doing it?"

"Livy," Dean asks, "when did Moira die?"

"Four months ago," Livy answers. "In a car crash. She was on her way here."

"Sloppy research, Sam," Dean says. "That's not like you." Silence answers him. Dean looks over; Sam's gone. "Where's she buried?"

"Why do you need to know?" Livy's mother asks.

"We have about three hours before one of the dancers downstairs dies in a car crash," Dean tells her. "I'm pretty sure it's Moira that's killing them. The surest way—" Livy's mother leans across Livy and slaps him.

"Mom!" Livy shouts.

"Dean," Sam says behind him, and Dean and Livy turn. Sam's holding both Moira's hands. "I'll show her the way home."

"You do that, Sam," Dean says. He turns back to Livy's mother. "I'm sorry we bothered you, ma'am," he says, "and I'm sorry for your loss." He gets up and leaves.

Sam's laptop is sitting in the shotgun seat of the Impala under a spare shirt. Dean knocks the shirt off and opens the laptop—there's no way Sam will be with it enough to do anything but tap keys—and starts the car. He's only a few minutes from the church, just onto the bridge heading out of town, when a little blue Mercury passes him. Two minutes after that, the Mercury jerks right—Dean slams the brakes—then left, narrowly avoiding a nosedive into the water, and comes to a stop.

Tap-tap: "It isn't her," says Sam's computer.

"No shit, Sam," Dean snaps, and goes to help the other driver. Sam's there before him, helping her out of the car: it's Livy. Somehow Dean isn't surprised. "So if it isn't Moira, who is it?"

"I think she really was just there to dance," Sam says.

"Thanks," Livy tells Sam, then looks down the road, empty except for a pair of oncoming headlights. "You saw him, right? In the road?"

"I didn't see anyone," Dean says. "Doesn't mean there was no one there. Do you know who it was?"

Livy shakes her head, then stops. "Moira wasn't alone in the car."

"Who else was there?" Dean asks, leaning back against the Mercury as the other car goes past.

"Her boyfriend. Jake Murphy. He died too."

Dean nods. "Let's go somewhere with wireless Internet and find his picture, see if he's who you saw."

"Okay," Livy says shakily. "Okay."

Livy doesn't have any better idea of where to find a Starbucks in Chestertown than Dean does, so they end up at Dean's motel room, the Mercury beside the Impala. Dean sprawls across one bed with Sam's laptop; Livy sits on the other. "Yahtzee," Dean says when Google brings up the obituary of a Jacob Murphy four months dead.

Livy looks at his picture. "That's who I saw on the bridge."

"So, what, he's mad at Moira for getting him killed over a square dance and he's taking it out on her dancer friends?" Dean asks.

Tappity-tap: "Sounds like it," says Sam's laptop. "He's not interested in resting in peace, either. I already tried."

Livy stares. Dean snorts. "No scaring the pretty girl, Sam."

Tap-tappity. "I'm too tired to manifest properly. Jerk."

"Get some rest, bitch," Dean answers. "Don't need you for this part anyway." He turns to Livy. "I'm gonna go put Jake to rest the hard way, and an hour or two from now this will all be over. You gonna be all right driving home?"

"Maybe," Livy says. "I don't know."

"You should probably stay here a few hours," Dean says. "He can't run you off a road you're not on."

"I guess." Livy looks away, then back. "Moira's all right?"

"She's not on Earth anymore," Dean answers. "Sam couldn't take her to Heaven and wouldn't take her to Hell, but every religion has at least one afterlife so there's a lot of possibilities, and they're mostly better than being dead on Earth. She'd have gone crazy if she'd stayed."

"Loneliness," Livy murmurs. "Why haven't you sent Sam on?"

Dean shrugs. "Loneliness." Sam echoes him, half a step behind.


End file.
